The "colorblind" society is often offered as a worthy ideal for individual interaction as well as public policy. The ethos of liberal democracy would seem indeed to demand that we comport ourselves in a manner completely indifferent to race (and class, and gender, and so on). But is this ideal of colorblindness capable of fulfillment? And whether it is or not, is it truly a worthy political goal? In order to address these questions, one must first explore the nature of (...) "race" itself. Is it ultimately real, or merely an illusion? What kind of reality, if any, does it have, and what are the practical (moral and political) consequences of its ontological status? This paper will explore the issue of colorblindness, focusing particularly on recent developments dealing with this topic in Continental philosophy. Beginning with the question of racial ontology, I will argue that race has a social reality that makes the practice of colorblindness, at least for the time being, politically untenable, and it may remain suspect even as a long-term goal. (shrink)

Traditional ethical discourses give little significance to the role of body, and highlight has been largely on human mind and consciousness. The idea of good and bad, right and wrong, desirable and undesirable—as binaries—is seen as articulated through the latter. Philosophical theories that articulate the significance of body and movement are very few—phenomenology as one among these few. Body, as site for ethic, calls for some significant philosophical considerations. The paper attempts to join phenomenological theorizing on lived-body and engages with (...) the issues of moral desirability. It also argues that moral discourse as structurally built on the idea of reciprocity is inadvertently about first-person lived-bodies interacting with one another. (shrink)